Gonzalo Leon Jr, Houston, Texas man charged in the shooting death of 11 year old boy, Julian Guzman in ding dong ditch prank gone wrong.
A Houston, Texas man has been charged with murder after allegedly fatally shooting an 11-year-old boy who was playing a game of ‘ding-dong ditch.’
Gonzalo Leon Jr., 42, was booked Tuesday in the Harris County jail in connection with the Saturday night shooting, KPRC reported.
The tragedy unfolded as a group of children were playing the door knock prank — which someone ringing a doorbell or knocking loudly on a door and then running away — at a home in Houston’s Eastside when the 11-year-old boy was shot. He was identified on Tuesday as Julian Guzman.
11 year old Houston boy shot dead in door prank gone wrong outcry
‘Officers were told that Guzman was ringing doorbells of homes in the area and running away,’ Houston police said in a news release. ‘A witness stated Guzman was running from a house, after ringing the doorbell, just prior to suffering a gunshot wound.’
The shooting was reported about an hour before midnight. The child was pronounced dead on Sunday at the hospital. The boy had sustained a gunshot wound to the back while fleeing the home.
The district attorney’s office said officers detained one person at the scene for questioning and then released the person. Guzman who was initially released is now scheduled to appear in court later on Tuesday.
Houston police homicide Sgt. Michael Cass said the shooting did not appear to be self-defense because it ‘wasn’t close to the house,’ KHOU reported.
It was revealed in the aftermath that Gonzalo, 42, resides at the same Houston home where Guzman was shot dead.
The boy’s mother Janet Rodriguez condemning her son’s murderer, saying the young boy ‘didn’t hurt anyone’ and ‘didn’t deserve’ to be killed for playing a game.
‘I can’t believe it. It’s a pain I never imagined I’d feel. He was just a child,’ the grieving mother wrote in a tribute translated from Spanish.
Dangers of ‘ding dong ditch’ door prank
Read a GoFundme fundraiser for the boy in part, ‘My child, my baby, was stolen from me at a very young age. We had a whole life ahead of us. He didn’t deserve it,’ Rodriguez wrote.
The episode led to an avalanche of commentators sympathising with the fallen boy, while others criticised the boy’s mother for allowing the child to be out so late. Others meanwhile pointed out to the propensity to gun violence as the ‘go to reaction,’ and the tragedy that such responses can often lead to.
‘What harm could they have done? Playing with a doorbell? That’s the part that really kind of hurts the heart,’ one local told KHOU. ‘For someone to shoot him in the back, they knew they were a kid. What’s the purpose of it.’
Sgt. Cass has since warned parents to ‘just be more cautious of the times we’re living in now.’
